Work Text:
“Peter. You’re grounded, you know I can’t let you leave this apartment.”
“But, Tony, it would only be for a few minutes, half an hour tops!” Peter practically whined, one hand on the door handle.
“Step away from that door, sticky hands,” Tony snapped his fingers without even looking up from the magazine he was reading on the couch.
“Ugh. Why are you even here? I don’t need a babysitter!” Tony didn’t even have to look to know that the boy stomped his foot like a little kid who very much needed a babysitter, but he let that thought pass.
“Because May knows that if you were left alone while she is working you would leave this apartment, as you’ve just proven,” Tony raised an eyebrow from the pages.
“I wouldn’t... I mean, it’s just... I was supposed to meet MJ! I’ve been so busy we haven’t hung out in weeks, and she knew I was grounded but then I told her it was fine because—“ he cut himself off when he realized he was about to tell on himself.
“Because May was going to be at work and you could sneak out?” Tony was still pretending to read the magazine, but he hadn’t turned the page in a few minutes.
“Come on Tony, please ,” he begged, getting desperate, “May took my phone since you were going to be here for emergencies. I just need to tell MJ I’m not standing her up.”
Tony snapped his magazine closed and set it on the couch, pulling out his phone. He typed briefly before setting it down.
“There. I don’t have Scary’s number, but I told Ted to let her know. We good now?”
Peter huffed, throwing himself onto the couch, “This is so embarrassing.”
“What’s embarrassing is the amount of homework you let pile up in favour of Spider-Man duties.”
“But I finished it all!” The teen dropped his fist onto the couch in frustration.
“It’s imparting a lesson, buddy,” Tony rested a hand on the kid’s knee, “Someday you won’t be able to skirt the line and fix it all in one night. Welcome to the world of consequences.”
“When you get behind on your paperwork, Pepper doesn’t ban you from the lab once you get it all done,” Peter pointed out with an eye roll.
“Oh, believe me, buddy, I pay those consequences in other ways. Don’t you know Pepper?” The man gave an amused huff.
“Fine,” Peter relented in exasperation, “But you shouldn’t have to sit here all day, you didn’t do anything.” He got up and began pacing in front of the man, sure to wear a hole in the floor if Tony didn’t give him the attention he so desperately required.
“No I didn’t,” Tony shrugged, and then gestured to the magazine, “And I’m thoroughly caught up on all things Hollywood. Who knew that Macaulay Culkin and Brenda Song were even together let alone having a baby, right? I swear the less that guy looks like that little kid from Home Alone, the older I feel,” he clapped his hands together, “So, let’s do something.”
“Like what,” the teen held his hand up in question, “I can’t leave the apartment, or watch TV or use any sort of electronic.”
Tony raised his hands up, “You’re a kid, aren’t you supposed to be good at using your imagination?”
“I’m a teenager ,” Peter rolled his eyes, then paused, seemingly struck by a thought, “Actually, it might be fun for you to help me work on my new business. I was planning on taking the day off, but I guess there’s no point in that now.”
“Your new business ?” Tony quirked an eyebrow, “How new is this business ? I’ve never heard of it,” He lifted himself off the couch, incredibly eager to see what his kid could have possibly gotten up to while he wasn’t paying attention. He was always paying attention, “I thought Spider-Man was your business.”
Peter’s lips curled, “Have I not told you about this? I could have sworn I did!” He snapped his fingers after some thought, “You know maybe it’s Happy I remember telling, or Ned...I talk a lot, it’s hard to keep all my conversations in order—which is funny because I have a really good memory! Oh, did I tell you what my teacher said about my memory the other day? He said he totally would have accused me of cheating on our last test because my answers were like—word for word—from the textbook, but I just memorized them that well! It’s a good thing he knows me so well because—”
“Kid! The new business?” Tony steered the teen back on track with an amused shake of his head.
“Oh right, sorry!” The boy gestured for Tony to follow him into his room and over to his desk where boxes and boxes of wires, scrap metal parts, and old laptops and computer monitors sat in an unkempt pile, “Spider-Man hasn’t exactly been the only thing keeping me from my homework the last few weeks,” he admitted, picking up one of the pieces on his desk and fiddling with it, “You see, I was walking home from school the other day when I saw a box next to the dumpster with not one, but two old broken down laptops in it. Can you believe it? It was like a goldmine! And my laptop was getting a little battered again, so it was perfect—“
“I told you I’d buy you a brand new, top-of-the-line laptop kid, why don’t you let me?”
Peter held his hand up, “Thank you, Mr. Stark but I told you I’m fine. Like I said, I found these pieces and it only took me like eight or nine hours to fix it up, good as new!” He held up his ‘new’ laptop to show Tony, decorated with a Star Wars sticker on top to brand it as his own. Tony had to admit, for a dumpster dive, the laptop did look practically new after the work he had done.
“And like I said, there were two laptops in that box. Obviously, I don’t need two laptops, but I went ahead and fixed the other one anyway because it was just sitting there looking all broken and sad.”
“You are aware it is an inanimate object, right? It doesn’t have feelings.”
Peter glared at his mentor, “That’s like saying FRIDAY or Dum-E don’t have feelings!”
Tony shrugged, “I mean technically —”
“ Anyway ,” Peter cut off the man’s train of thought before he said something truly insulting, “Ned told me I should try selling the second one online, and I thought, you know, that was a pretty good idea, so I listed it, and guess what? Someone bought it, like, right away!” Peter beamed proudly, “I made thirty bucks, how cool is that!”
“Wait, wait, wait , hold up a second there,” Tony paused the kid with a wave of his hand, “You charged thirty dollars for a whole laptop?”
Peter blushed, “I know, I probably should have given it away for free but the guy seemed pretty happy!!”
“Of course he did,” Tony shook his head, his kid was truly baffling sometimes, “I didn’t mean you should have given it away for free, Pete, I meant that thirty dollars is nowhere near enough for a whole new laptop, refurbished or not.”
“But the laptop was free Mr. Stark, and I only needed to buy a few screws for it—”
“Did you not just say you worked on it for eight hours ?”
“Well...yeah, but I didn’t mind. I like doing this kind of stuff,” The kid shrugged like a whole day’s worth of work was nothing. “That’s why I decided to start up a business! I’m constantly finding scraps of stuff in dumpsters, if I can sell each one for that much I could really help out Aunt May.”
“Kid,” Tony shook his head with a laugh, “You could be making so much more than that though. I’m not saying your idea isn’t a good one, but you’ve got to charge for your time too, not just the materials,” he explained, sitting down on the kid’s bed and resting his head in his hands, “I think I need to let Pepper give you a crash course on business 101.”
“I don’t know,” Peter shrugged, sitting down on his desk chair and spinning around, “It seems unfair to charge a lot. Can’t I just do it for enjoyment and feel happy to make a little extra on the side?”
Tony lifted his head and studied the kid, long and hard. He could be making a few hundred dollars a week if he wanted to. It would be an easy way to save up for college if Tony wasn’t already planning on sending him to whatever college he wanted to go to himself *cough* MIT *cough*. He could definitely fund his constant need for a new backpack at the very least, the really fancy kinds with names nobody could pronounce. But of course, Peter would never think like that, because whether in the suit or not, the kid was always looking out for the little guy.
Finally, he relented with a sigh, “I suppose you could, kiddo. It doesn’t make you the best businessman, but I guess it also wouldn’t make you Peter if you did it any other way, huh?”
“I just like making people happy,” Peter shrugged, picking up his screwdriver and a loose circuit board.
Tony regarded him affectionately, resisting the urge to reach across and ruffle his hair, “You certainly do that, buddy.”
Ignoring the soft words, the teen turned to his mentor once more, “So do you want to help me today or not? We can split the money fifty-fifty!
Tony chuckled, “How do you feel about upping your selling price to fifty at least, come on kid, throw me a small bone here? I don’t think that’s unreasonable.”
Peter squirmed, “I guess if we’re going to split the cash...”
Tony wasn’t planning on taking a cent of the kid’s money, still, the businessman inside of him couldn’t help but want at least a marginally better deal for his spiderling.
“Kiddo, I promise you, fifty dollars is still an incredibly good deal for a laptop. You’ll still be making people happy and you won’t be selling yourself quite so short.”
Peter thought about it, “Maybe. Fifty extra dollars does sound nicer than thirty,” he admitted, swapping his Phillips for a flat head, “but if the person looks like they really need it I’ll lower it back down.”
Tony huffed, giving in this time and reaching out to actually ruffle the kid’s hair, at least he tried , “Alright, Underoos.”
Things got quiet after that and Tony sat back a moment, amazed and immeasurably proud watching his kid work so effortlessly between the tools and the metal. He was so transfixed, in fact, that when Peter broke the silence a few minutes later, it took him a beat to register the words being spoken to him.
“So Saturday’s are usually the best days for finding things dumped in alleyways and thrown out in the garbage. Do you want to make the rounds and see what you can find? Then you can bring them back here. I bet with the two of us we could get at least three of them ready to sell by the end of the day!”
“Are you really asking Tony Stark to go dumpster diving, kid?”
“Well, I am grounded, after all, remember?” Peter quirked his brow in challenge, “But, hey, if you’re cool with not telling Aunt May I can totally go and—”
“Nope, definitely not happening,” Tony held up his hands in surrender, “The wrath of May Parker is by far scarier than whatever the press can write up about me sifting through the garbage on my day off.”
“If you say so,” Peter shrugged, turning back to his work.
Tony walked toward the door dejectedly, the things he did for his kid , but he couldn’t stop himself from turning, just shy of the threshold, and glancing back to watch for a few seconds longer. Peter was already totally immersed in his work again, brows knitted together, hands steady and totally concentrated as he joined two pieces. Tony knew that he would be that way for hours until the job was done, and by the end, he would be rewarded with another thirty bucks, because let’s face it, no matter who chose to buy that laptop, they would all look like they ‘really needed it’ in Peter’s eyes. And his heart pinched at the thought. God he loved his kid.
.
.
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Okay, moment over, time to go garbage hunting in his newly dry-cleaned, freshly pressed, cashmere shirt. Awesome.